Historical Trends in Moscow and Leningrad Crime

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Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, the major Soviet cities, presently have lower rates of criminality than other urban areas in the USSR,1 thus defying the generally observed correlation between the level of urbanization and the crime rate.2 The Soviet Union has not always been the exception to this internationally observed phenomenon, for in the period directly after the 1917 revolution these three cities had exceedingly high rates of criminality.3 The crime trends of all three major Soviet cities is not coincidental but, as the author shows, this change is a direct result of government policies intended to make these urban areas showcases of the Soviet state. As a result of this governmental decision, population policies have been introduced in the last fifty years of the Soviet period to insure that only the most "desirable individuals" reside in major urban centers. Consequently, the favored cities have experienced a significant decline in criminality, while the regions not favored by government population policies have suffered measurable increases in criminality. This article will focus on the changes that have occurred in the criminality of the major urban centers of the USSR, in particular, Moscow and Leningrad, in the years since the 1917 revolution. The crime trends of Moscow have been documented in a recent Soviet collection (Comparative Criminological Research in Moscow in 1923 and 1968-1969),4 but evidence also exists from other criminological sources to assert that such a dramatic transformation has occurred in the level of crime of all major Soviet cities.